Black Mountain Help Ladyhawk At Transmission

The Biltmore Cabaret

Vancouver, BC

on Dec 3 2008

Quinn Omori (CHARTattack)

12/05/2008 4:19pm

The first night of live events for 2008's Transmission Festival kicked off with a bang on Wednesday night. The festival, which runs alongside a conference that organizers describe as "a future-focused, solution-minded music and digital technology conference," got rolling at Vancouver's Biltmore Cabaret with a night of performances by three hometown acts, all of whom were chosen based on a poll of local industry folk.

Twin Crystals opened the evening at the rather un-rock 'n' roll hour of 8:30 p.m., but an early start and a half-empty room didn't hinder their performance. The trio blended no wave synths with hardcore drums and guitars, and did their damndest to get the sleepy crowd excited. But save for a few of the early arrivers, even a rabid, feedback-laced rendition of recent single "Two Girls" didn't wake up the quiet audience. Singer/keyboardist Jesse Taylor didn't seem to mind, and acknowledged they were a little out of their element a few times from the stage. They capped off their short but sweet set with a self-mocking round of boos.

The Biltmore was starting to fill up when Said The Whale hit the stage, but despite larger numbers and another fairly strong set, the audience (part conference attendees, part paying public) kept its enthusiasm to a polite level.

The band worked their way through an hour of tightly crafted indie pop, punctuating things early with "The Light Is You," which CHARTattack readers might recognize from a Sun-Rype commercial, and later on with a mid-song segue into a cover of "Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)."

Ladyhawk headlined the evening and, from the opening chords of their set, it was clear who most people had come to see. The hometown heroes pulled from both their self-titled debut and their latest, Shots, before they finished with a track from their recently released split seven-inch with Attack In Black and Shotgun Jimmie.

The guys have been logging a lot of hours on the road in support of Shots and the extra stage time has certainly paid off. They've always been one of the better live acts in Vancouver and, despite between-song banter that suggested they weren't taking the gig too seriously (Duffy Driediger repeatedly growled "Transmissssion!" into the mic between jokes about the rather prominent ads on display around the room), they were extremely tight while maintaining their raw, Crazy Horse-indebted sound.

The band were given an extra boost on a few numbers when a sunglassed Josh Wells of Black Mountain dropped in wielding a keytar to help fill out the sound, but that was just icing on the cake.